Re: origin of the kiss

abortugno@aol.com
21 Nov 1996 04:33:58 GMT

I seem to remember Diane Ackerman writing about the origin of the kiss,
either in The Natural History of the Senses or The Natural History of
Love. There are two things I remember, vaguely. One is that it comes from
feeding babies. Mothers would chew food so that it could be passed to
their babies from their mouths. The bond became so sensual and so
important that the "kiss" after we developed tools to chop food for
babies. The second explanation I remember is that humans have lots of
scent glands in the mustauche area (we do perspire there a lot) and our
primitive olfactory receptors register the scent of the person important
to us, causing us to want to put our noses close enough to smell our
favorite people. A.G. Bortugno